From Naz With Love Podcast

Twelve was my last year on the block, before foster care came for me. My last year staring out the window through rusted bars, watching the six train rattle past every six to eight minutes like clockwork. My last year in that narrow room beneath the roof, where the ceiling held but the rooftop shook. Cops sprinting across it like they were chasing ghosts, the thuds and shouts dropping down through...

This is a part of my life that I never shared with anyone. My life was in danger, and I did not realize just how much. Every night someone seemed to die. Maybe not every single night, but often enough that it felt constant. There was no real police presence. I remember one time the police came, banging on doors and carrying out body bags and evidence bags, but most of the time they were nowhere to...

There was once a palace at the heart of a great nation. Its halls were wide enough for echoes to get lost, and its chandeliers sparkled with a thousand suns. One day, the ruler of the land stood in its grand entrance and declared, “I shall build a ballroom here, the finest the world has ever seen…at my own expense!” The nobles clapped and cheered, for they loved a place to dance, to toast, and to...

This is my very first story on this page, and I’m kicking it off with a tribute to the man who raised me, shaped me, and made me laugh harder than anyone else ever has — my grandfather, Frank Weems. I called him “Daddy” because that’s exactly who he was to me: the father I never had. There’s something special about grandparents — like they hold the secrets of the world in their laugh lines and chu...